Discovery Tours (requiring separate tickets)

Distinctive Collections

On the Distinctive Collections tour, take a stroll down Shop Lane, a brick street flanked by storefronts of the 18th and 19th centuries, and go “window shopping” among the displays of English ceramics, gleaming silver, and lustrous copper cookwares. You’ll also visit the China Shop, filled with rare Chinese porcelains, and the End Shop, where shelves laden with bolts of cloth and utilitarian wares recall a general dry goods store from the 1800s. On the 8th floor, you will see the uniquely American collections of earthenware and stoneware pottery and the spare and calming Shaker rooms as well as Dutch Hudson Valley furniture from colonial New York, bedrooms furnished with Pennsylvania German artifacts, and the delightful Child’s Room, with its child-sized, four-poster canopy bed and timeless toys that run on imagination alone.

When H. F. and Ruth Wales du Pont lived here, they called the fourth floor the entrance floor since it is where they welcomed their guests in rooms designed to create fabulous first impressions. Today visitors on the Antiques & Architecture Tour will see those reception rooms and surrounding spaces filled with outstanding collections of furniture and accessories dating primarily from the 18th century, with particular emphasis on high-style Queen Anne and Chippendale furniture from the mid-1700s. Contrasting with these elegant interiors are colorful Pennsylvania German fraktur and painted chests displayed against the architectural backdrop of a rustic 1750s stone farmhouse. Specialty collections include an array of mold-blown glass pocket flasks from the early 1800s, an expansive display of iron cooking implements, Philadelphia pewter from the mid-1700s, and cupboards full of diverse ceramics including colorful delftwares from England and the Netherlands, whimsical Pennsylvania German sgraffito, refined creamware by Wedgwood in a variety of patterns, and Chinese porcelains in the famille rose palette, which was H. F. du Pont’s personal favorite.

For families with children under 8 years old, Winterthur offers many fun alternatives. Kids can explore the Touch-It Room, grab a backpack and read, visit the Hands on History Cart (Saturdays), and roam the Enchanted Woods! Visit the family programs Web page for more information.